"You have to know the past to understand the present"
(Carl Sagan, on Cosmos 2nd Episode - One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue).
In a recent (really) short paper, Erick and I extended the findings presented by Ledo and colleagues (2020). They studied a forest-dwelling lizard from the South American Dry Diagonal and observed that it is a recently derived lineage with strong connections between populations. These findings suggest that forests that occur in the river networks could allow the interchange of species between the wet regions like the Amazon and the Atlantic forest.
We hope to see future studies that test this hypothesis using many taxa, including understudied organisms like plants! Luckily, Erick will be able to use 'cataia' (Pimenta pseudocaryophylus) to test this hypothesis.
By the way, this paper (here) is Erick's first contribution as a member of our group! Great job, Erick!
